Starting a new job tomorrow. All the bells and whistles going, the familiar panic and anxiety combo. But age and experience have their advantage in that the feels aren’t as overwhelming anymore. Instead they’re rather distilling. Burning the essence out of the ingredients involved. And I think my main USP is persistence. I tend to not give up. I might not be as graceful or diplomatic as many, but I do make things work.

And I think I get the thrust from that word zoo in my mind. Words are my shtick. In my head thoughts are roaming the wild like a bunch of liberated serengetians. Doing work and giving structure to a project is the side-noise needed to keep me sane. And let me ponder in the background.

Brain science tells us there are three kinds of intuition: ordinary, expert, and strategic.

Ordinary intuition is just a feeling, a gut instinct.

Expert intuition is snap judgments, when you instantly recognize something familiar, the way a tennis pro knows where the ball will go from the arc and speed of the opponent’s racket.

Strategic intuition is a clear thought. It’s not a vague feeling, like ordinary intuition. And it’s not fast like expert intuition. It’s slow. That epiphany of insight you had last night might solve a problem that’s been on your mind for a month. And it doesn’t happen in familiar situations, like a tennis match. Strategic intuition works in new situations. That’s when you need it most.

This third kind of intuition is what I go by whenever I can. Strategic intuition is what guides the majority of my decision making. And while it is unpopular these days to request time for thinking, you have to take your stand and do it anyway, and allow for proper time to reflect. I have a 24 hrs ‘sleep it over’ rule.

Which compliments my other approach to life and everything: The OODA loop (observe, orient, decide and act). This ‘rapid evaluation routine’ is permanently running on the back of my mind (or wherever my intuition-o-meter sits). The OODA method is applied by pilots who rely on the loop to make fast decisions and have to review them in a constant cognitive circle.

From the Ethics Centre: A quick review of the topic of Universal Basic Income (UBI) – the idea of a regular and liveable payment with no strings attached – no exchange of labour or goods.

The idea of a UBI has deep historical roots. In Thomas More’s Utopia, published in 1516, he writes that instead of punishing a poor person who steals bread, “it would be far more to the point to provide everyone with some means of livelihood, so that nobody’s under the frightful necessity of becoming, first a thief, and then a corpse”.

Over three hundred years later, John Stuart Mill also supported the concept in Principles of Political Economy, arguing that “a certain minimum [income] assigned for subsistence of every member of the community, whether capable of labour or not” would give the poor an opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty.

In the 20th century, the UBI gained support from a diverse array of thinkers for very different reasons. Martin Luther King, for instance, saw a guaranteed payment as a way to uphold human rights in the face of poverty, while Milton Friedman understood it as a viable economic alternative to state welfare.

Reading about human relationships, and the essence required to push through. According to psychological research, the greatest emotional need is security. Yet, trying to live in alignment with your goals and values often conflicts with the complexities of reality.

Wanting approval is a normal thing, but needing approval is very different. A need for approval leads to working on projects one is not excited about. Leads to eating unhealthy foods one doesn’t want to eat. Leads to ruminating and obsessing about problems and regrets one could easily remove or fix. A quest for perfectionism actually creates procrastination. Perfectionism is about an unhealthy need for approval. It’s about a fear of failure and looking incompetent. It’s the opposite of courage. And it’s the opposite of mastery.

Jody Williamson and Stephen Covey say “an abundance mentality springs from internal security, not from external rankings, comparisons, opinions, possessions, or associations.You must believe you are independently wealthy, and that you don’t NEED a particular prospect. When you truly believe and know you are fine and secure without THIS relationship or THIS opportunity, then you can act honestly and genuinely.”

I am in the process of establishing just that. Independence, and inner wealth. Freedom, from the need of approval.

– Declarative learning is acquiring information that one can speak about. The capital of a state is a declarative piece of information, while knowing how to ride a bike is not. Episodic memory and semantic memory are a further division of declarative information.

There are two ways to learn a telephone number: memorise it using your declarative memory, or use it many times to create a habit. Habit learning is called procedural memory

Declarative memory uses your medial temporal lobe and enables you to recall the telephone number at will. Procedural memory activates the telephone number only when you are at the telephone, and uses your right-hemisphere’s skill, pattern recognition.

Research indicates declarative and habit memory compete with each other during distraction. When in doubt, the brain chooses habit memory because it is automatic. –

That is what my brain currently does: It runs on autopilot to deal with tasks at work. The burnout does not allow for constructive creativity and forward thinking. The lack of love only allows for getting through the day on autopilot.

“Brevity is the soul of wit. But not in so many words.”
– @NeinQuarterly

There are two sides to Comms. One where big words induce calculated sentiment, to impact on feelings and steer behaviour. The other where the lot gets synthesised into a single easy-to-digest message. I’m with the latter. That’s my shtick. People don’t have time anymore. Be clear, make it brief.

End of year situations tend to make one reflect… so this morning I sat with my coffee and spent some time pondering over the past year, and came to the conclusion that, all in all, I am living my best life. I am doing alright. I was helpful to people, and tried not to hurt anyone. I looked after myself and others. I am able to forgive myself, and hold no grudges against anyone.

In its most basic term, blockchain is a database of transactions that can be arranged and added to in “blocks”. Each block represents and identifies previous transactions using cryptographic functions, to create an unbroken chain of custody for goods or services that, importantly, cannot be modified.

Acting as a digital ledger, blockchain creates a verifiable audit trail that can be used for any transaction, and this is where its impact on sustainability begins to take shape. Blockchain can be implemented – and in some cases, is already used – across numerous sectors, from forestry and fisheries to carbon accounting and energy.

It is a self-governing, online database owned by no one and usable by everyone. Because the “chain” can’t be modified* it can immediately provide proof of purchase for any transaction, whether that be procurement of sustainable materials to purchasing renewable energy.

The history of rebellion is rife with excess and burnout. But new generations have a distinctive commitment to be reflective and activist at once, to be in service as much as in charge, and to learn from history while bringing very new realities into being. Quaker wise man Parker Palmer and journalist and entrepreneur Courtney Martin come together for a cross-generational conversation about the inner work of sustainable, resilient social change.

I think, while social media is all nice and good, it has the potential to lure you into a false sense of connectedness. On the most basic human level, social interaction is much more than exchanging information, words. It is a person’s body language, their presence, that nourishes the soul. You can’t get that through a screen. But as you wilt away, starving yourself from that oldest of human needs, you don’t know why you get sick… you only know that something’s not right… and if you’re a sucker for that, you will most likely blame yourself for being unwell, for not performing.

This month it’s been 5 years that I was on Twitter. Twitter is the only social platform I frequent; I find it already hard to keep one running while still meeting actual real people in the other actual real life.

People spend a lot of time looking at their phones. Even the word phone has entirely morphed from one thing to something completely different now.

I digress.

I’m taking a break from Twitter. And it feels kinda odd. While I’ve already got more done in just one day than I probably would’ve in three, I miss the voices and the laughter. (no I’m not hearing voices) I was never one for herd mentality. Twitter lets you forget that not all is good only because the loudest says so. The integrity of a writer is not manifested in the amount of followers they have. In this short-attention-span world of ours, every single bit of critical thinking is important for sanity and goodness to prevail (hopefully, after all, fingers crossed), so don’t let anyone shout you out.

May 2010, as Britain headed into its last general election, elites all across the western world were gripped by austerity fever, a strange malady that combined extravagant fear with blithe optimism. Every country running significant budget deficits – as nearly all were in the aftermath of the financial crisis – was deemed at imminent risk of becoming another Greece unless it immediately began cutting spending and raising taxes. Concerns that imposing such austerity in already depressed economies would deepen their depression and delay recovery were airily dismissed; fiscal probity, we were assured, would inspire business-boosting confidence, and all would be well.

People holding these beliefs came to be widely known in economic circles as “austerians” – a term coined by the economist Rob Parenteau – and for a while the austerian ideology swept all before it.Continue reading →